This blog is totally independent, unpaid and has only three major objectives.
The first is to inform readers of news and happenings in the e-Health domain, both here in Australia and world-wide.
The second is to provide commentary on e-Health in Australia and to foster improvement where I can.
The third is to encourage discussion of the matters raised in the blog so hopefully readers can get a balanced view of what is really happening and what successes are being achieved.

Thursday, March 05, 2015

Review Of The Ongoing Post - Budget Controversy 5th March 2015. Urgent Work Now Underway on 2016 One!

Budget Night was on Tuesday 13th May, 2014 and it is still not finalised by any means.

Both major health and education changes as well as pension changes are still stuck and we have a new Families Package being floated . Also we have only 3 sitting weeks in Parliament before the next Budget - due to be handed down Tuesday 12th , May 2015.

The big news is the Co-Payment barnacle removal earlier this week. Sadly it seems the Government is still plotting to make many pay more to visit a GP - details yet to come. Watch this space!

The federal government will release its intergenerational report and tax white paper before the May budget.

The intergenerational report is a five-yearly review by Treasury which looks at the impact of demographic change on economic growth, the financial implications of policies and trends over the next four decades.

Treasurer Joe Hockey said the report, which he described as "an exciting document", would be released on March 5.

This would be followed by "extensive consultation" with the public and a discussion paper on tax reform, before the release of the May budget and a white paper on reform of the federation.

TONY Abbott will seek backbench approval for a recovery plan for his government, including a likely move within days to dump the Medicare co-payment, as he stares down attempts to panic Liberal MPs into another leadership showdown.

The Prime Minister’s fightback strategy will be to refocus the budget, cement his national ­security credentials and show he is listening to the concerns of the Liberal partyroom.

Conscious of consulting his colleagues, Mr Abbott wants to discuss options with MPs before any decisions are finalised, but he is considering making a health policy statement to quell concerns about the future of Medicare. He also, as a courtesy, plans to take ­announcements on a further troop commitment in Iraq to the partyroom.

Following a meeting with New Zealand Prime Minister John Key, Mr Abbott last night said that when some “final processes have been completed” he would, within days, be able to announce that Australia would be joining New Zealand in the training of Iraqi forces.

The Intergenerational Report, to be released on Thursday, will be used to reset the campaign to fix the budget, making it clear to voters that difficult reforms will be needed to ensure the nation’s ­finances are sustainable.

LIBERAL MP Malcolm Turnbull’s penchant for intriguing dinner companions was once dubbed “chopstick diplomacy” after he wined and dined Clive Palmer over a $17 banana split.

Just weeks after the Budget, the pair was captured laughing as they emerged from Wild Duck to a mob of photographers. To his critics, the dinner was evidence Turnbull still dreamt of becoming prime minister and was courting the millionaire MP.

Broadcaster Alan Jones pointed out Palmer had described the PM as “WTF”: Worse Than (Malcolm) Fraser.

Health Budget Issues.

The newly privatised Australian firm Medibank Private has started flexing its muscles, leaning on hospital providers to lower their charges in a tough market for insurers.

The insurer has also begun trials with GPs to expand their services beyond basic consultations to offer more sophisticated treatment, in the hope of keeping patients out of hospital and therefore cutting the insurers' costs.

The moves come as Medibank missed its revenue growth and revenue per customer forecasts in its half year earnings, the first released since it listed on the share market.

Gareth Hutchens

Access to affordable medicines could be under threat in Australia if the United States gets its way in secretive negotiations over a massive trade deal involving 12 Pacific-region countries, academics have warned.

If Australian negotiators give the US what it wants in these negotiations they will also put at risk the financial sustainability of Australia's Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, they say.

Dr Deborah Gleeson, from Melbourne's La Trobe University, has warned in the Medical Journal of Australia that pharmaceutical monopoly protections already cost the Australian health system hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and new US ambitions for intellectual property protections would "expand and entrench" those monopolies, making it even costlier.

Health Editor, Sydney Morning Herald

Hospitals are being forced to cover severe funding shortfalls in NSW by raising hundreds of millions of dollars in external revenue, the state's doctors say.

They have called on the state government to urgently freeze so-called "revenue targets", which are growing at a faster pace than overall health funding.

The call is part of a broad platform of election priorities to be released by the NSW arm of the Australian Medical Association on Tuesday.

The doctors say that, particularly in western Sydney, hospitals are becoming swamped with increasing numbers of people suffering serious conditions, at the same time as federal health cuts are creating chaos and uncertainty.

Health and Indigenous Affairs Correspondent

Hundreds of thousands of Australians who currently pay nothing to see their doctor could face having to pay the full cost of their visit upfront as a result of the Abbott government's Medicare changes, a Senate committee has heard.

Health department officials told an estimates hearing late on Wednesday that it expects about 5 per cent of services to non-concessional patients which are currently bulk-billed would be privately billed following the changes, which are due to come into effect in July.

This would mean that these patients would have to pay the full cost of the visit upfront, and make their own claim for a rebate from Medicare.

From July, the government is proposing to cut the Medicare rebate for GP visits for non-concessional patients by $5, and allow doctors to recoup the loss by charging patients a fee of up to $5.

PRIVATE health insurance heavyweight Medibank Private will slug policyholders with a 6.59 per cent increase in premiums – well above the 6.18 per cent rise approved by the federal government.

Rival insurer Nib Holdings, which is primarily focussed on the under 40s market, will also increase its premiums by an average of 6.55 per cent across all products.

The changes will be effective April 1.

The increase follows on from a government-approved 6.2 per cent increase in premiums in 2014. Medibank Private, which was government owned up until its listing on the Australian Securities Exchange last year, and Nib Holdings said they had received approval from Federal Health Minister Sussan Ley to increase their premiums at above the prescribed rate.

Medibank surprised the market last week in its first set of results in private ownership with the company posting a 5.2 per cent lift in premium revenue for six months to Decemer 31 – well below the 6.2 per cent growth it promised investors it would deliver in its prospectus.

HEALTH insurance premiums will rise 6.2 per cent on average for the second year running after the Abbott government approved another request from insurers to slug members more.

The increases from April 1 — including a 6.59 per cent increase for Medibank Private, its first since being privatised — will be higher in real terms for some members because the insurance rebate increases only in line with inflation.

Successive governments have approved premium increases above inflation despite warnings that rising costs are forcing members to scale back their cover.

Health Minister Sussan Ley yesterday sought to emphasise how the benefits paid to members had grown by more than $1 billion — or 7.4 per cent — to about $17.3bn in the year to December.

Health Editor

The federal government is committed to making non-concession patients pay more to see their GP, Health Minister Sussan Ley has warned ahead of her next meeting with health and consumer groups on Tuesday.

On the eve of a meeting in Canberra with eight organisations believed to be opposed to any new GP fees, Ms Ley reiterated her view that people who can afford to pay more for healthcare should pay more.

"We're committed to maintaining high-quality care and treatment and protecting bulk-billing for concession card holders and the vulnerable and both will be high on my agenda today," she said on Monday.

Health Minister Sussan Ley has re-affirmed the Government’s commitment to the GP co-payment, arguing that it is necessary so that people ‘value’ the health care they receive. In the following piece, the Consumers Health Forum CEO, Adam Stankevicius, questions the Government’s association of price signals with value, given the fact that Medicare has provided Australians with some of the best health outcomes and longest life expectancies in the world. He writes:

When the Government began its ill-considered attempt to cut Medicare funding last year, it should have known that provoking the doctors can turn out to be a very expensive business.

What began as a surprise measure to slug patients $7 per GP, pathology and diagnostic imaging visit, sling the doctors a couple of dollars and fund an ambitious $20 billion medical research future fund has transmogrified several times. The idea of generating more money from doctors’ visits to finance something other than doctors’ incomes was always naively ambitious.

Health and Indigenous Affairs Correspondent

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has given his clearest signal yet that he may be preparing to dump his controversial plan for a fee to see a GP.

Mr Abbott also promised to appear regularly with NSW Premier Mike Baird during the state campaign in a move that could unnerve some Liberal MPs concerned that an "Abbott factor" could damage the popular Premier's election prospects.

Appearing at a press conference in Auckland following talks with his New Zealand counterpart John Key, Mr Abbott was asked about media reports that he would abandon the unpopular policy.

National affairs editor of The Age

Many Coalition MPs seem to accept a change in leadership is inevitable, but are unwilling to trigger it themselves.

Bruce Billson, the Small Business Minister in Tony Abbott's government, inadvertently dropped a stink bomb among his tense colleagues during the last day of Parliament last week.

Answering a benign question about petrol prices, he took a swipe at the previous Labor government's attitude to the price watchdog, the ACCC.

"What we've found under the previous Labor Government, while they're changing leaders, changing ministers, five in 15 months, they actually forgot to actually give the resources to the ACCC to do its job properly," he said, though much of the tortured sentence was quite drowned out.

A Guild delegation of around 60 pharmacy owners spent two days in Canberra this week telling politicians how vital and urgent it is that a new Community Pharmacy Agreement is put in place.

The great thing about this big group was that it meant pharmacy owners were able to tell their stories of the difficulties they are facing directly to their MPs and Senators – and the stories are compelling and real.

Our message at over 70 meetings across the two days was that the threat to the viability of local pharmacies, the jobs of their staff and their services to patients is real and must be addressed as a matter of urgency.

“Practices [we] are being made aware of, I believe, warrant further investigation,” he said.

Senator Edwards, the committee chair, was referring to an ongoing investigation by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission into claims Chemist Warehouse had misled customers over the discounts available on its products.

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Comment:

I also have to say reading all the articles I still have no idea what is actually going to happen with the 2015 (or the 2016) Budget (or the Government) at the end of the day. Will the Medicare Co-payment go this week I wonder?

One wonders for how much longer all this will go on and just what impact a apparently almost inevitable change of leader might have?